Who should provide a trade-in service under the online agency-selling mode?

Abstract

In real world practice, trade-in programs are offered by either a manufacturer or an e-commerce platform. Parties that offer a trade-in service are faced with a trade-off between trade-in rebates and the residual income. By adopting the game theory, this paper explored the selection of trade-in provider with respect to a manufacturer and an e-commerce platform. The results show that in some cases, all trade-in models generated higher manufacturing costs than models with no trade-in program. However, in other cases not all trade-in models can cope with manufacturing costs that are higher than those associated with models that have no trade-in program. Furthermore, both above two firms will offer the trade-ins when profits which they have obtained satisfied a certain condition. We also identified an interesting phenomenon whereby the manufacturer decided whether it wanted to delegate the trade-ins to the e-commerce platform or provide it jointly. The e-commerce platform can decide whether it wants to accept the delegation or jointly offer it. This study also obtain that trade-in models makes customers get more surplus and can produce greater environmental benefits. Moreover, both the customer surplus and the environmental benefits in delegated trade-in model is the same that in jointly trade-in model.